Nudgemail

Over the last week or so I’ve been using Nudgemail to great effect. I think there are others like it, though I haven’t tried any of them yet. It works particularly well at providing the reminders for a “no-list” system, though you could use it with any system.

Here are a few of the things you can do with it:

• Getting emails out of your in-box which you can’t action at present
• Follow-up action of any type (e.g. has John replied to this email yet?)
• Sending yourself a reminder on any date in the future (e.g. Buy B’s birthday present)
• Sending yourself regular reminders (e.g. put the recycling out today)
• Snoozing emails you don’t want to deal with now
• Integrating your to-do list into your email in-box
• Chasing yourself to take action (e.g. have you replied to Darren yet?)
• Bringing forward earlier posts (e.g. Here’s last week’s stats - update them for this week)
• Acting as a reminder system for Evernote, rather more efficiently than Evernote itself.
• Letters to your future self

The one thing it doesn’t do at the moment is forward attachments to emails, though this is promised for the future.

Definitely worth trying out, especially as it’s entirely free. If you are impressed by it you can show your gratitude by signing on as a sponsor for a monthly amount set by you.

Comments

[Mike Brown]

Agreed on the utility of services like this. I use FollowUpThen, but Inbox by Google is also introducing snooze features. These are great ways to remind me about putting out the garbage bin on Wednesday night or changing the furnace filter every few months without cluttering my calendar.

[Mark Forster]

Mike:

Looking at FollowUpThen's website, I think it does very much the same (and in very much the same way) but has compulsory charging if you exceed a free limit, plus some of the features are only available to paying customers. Nudgemail on the other hand is completely free and does not restrict any of its features. Support for the site is entirely voluntary.

Nudgemail actually envisages doing away with your to-do list altogether and just working off your email inbox. I expect that would work with the others too. I might try it sometime.

[aus]

Inbox by Google does all of this really well. Highly recommended.

[Mark Forster]

aus:

I don't use gmail so can't use that, but it looks good.

[Samir]

I used FollowupThen too. I pay for it, but its like $25 a year I think. So convenient.

[Stuart Tattum]

Other services that offer this functionality are followup.cc and the Sane Reminders part of SaneBox. Both services publish a calendar of your reminders that have been snoozed so you can view them in your Calendar app alongside your appointments. Both have annual fees. The Reminders in Google Inbox also appear in your Google Calendar.

[Cricket]

Google calendar now has reminders and goals. Reminders are one-shot (but can notify you daily until it's done). Goals are ongoing series.

I use Google calendar for all my appointments, and use "all day" events for ticklers. Every morning I look at the next few days on the calendar (for all sorts of reasons), and at least a week a head a few times a week. And every few days I look back for things I missed. (A tickler is a reminder to think about something, not an expectation to do anything more.)

I also use multiple Google calendars. Each calendar is a different colour, and I can display only the ones I want. One per person. Husband maintains his own, and a work one. He shares both with me. He shares his personal one with his coworkers in semi-private mode, so they see blocked times but not details. One of my calendars is for reminders, so I can hide them.

[Mike Brown]

I do pay for FollowUpThen, as I like the feature it has to include my work email as a separate address. So I only get work reminders sent from my work email address, which keeps work and non-work reminders separate.

I'd previously paid for MemoToMe, mainly on a donation basis, but it was not as flexible as FUT.

While I know how to manage my email, I've tended to see emails as a source for reminders and prompts that would migrate to a calendar or task list. I will put on my no-list "check Outlook" (work email) and "check gmail" (personal) and then process each email via do-delegate-defer. I record my accomplishments in daily logs in Evernote, which I use to quickly assemble a weekly log of accomplishments for my manager.

At both work and home, though, I will keep one or two emails active in the inbox as an extra reminder to prep for a meeting happening that day or that I simply want to keep in front of me. When the meeting passes or the birthday card is mailed, then I delete the reminder.